Bootstrapped Web

Alright. We're back with Bootstrap Web. We've got a party episode for you guys today. Our friend Rob Williams is on the line. What's up, Rob?

What's up, guys?

Alright. And Jordan, as always, how's it going, buddy?

Good. Good. Nice to join you guys, Robert. Thanks for, for coming on for Friday morning party episode.

Maybe at some point, Alan Branch will be calling in. We're not quite sure. He might be lost at sea somewhere.

We're rooting for the the call in from the sailboat. That's that'll be a a new one for us.

Yeah. We'll keep the suspense up on that one. But, know, Rob, I think you've been on the on the show, a couple months back. You and I used to be in a mastermind group together for for a while. What's going on with that's workshop?

Some folks may be familiar with it, but I know you've gone through some some changes over the last couple of months. So where things at right now?

Yeah. Workshop's been kind of a slow build. I've I've done some pricing changes and some, different things, and it's just kinda kept growing slowly. And I'm I'm happy with it and people, freelancers in the service keep winning contracts from the from the leads we find. So happy about it.

We were just talking about, before the recording, it's kinda like half software, half service, kinda like what what Jordan and I were talking about last week, you know, combining the two. It's basically an email list where you send out handpicked freelance leads, like quality leads to to freelancers, but it's all handpicked with your team and they send out the email and then there's some software where they can kind of manage their their leads and that sort of thing. It's kind of cool.

Exactly. It's kind of like like if Google alerts were like really good and like not just like random stuff. Like if you set it up to send you freelancing gigs from from all around the the web and it actually worked, that's kind of what Workshop is. But but there's people behind the process that are actually doing the sorting and stuff and finding it.

It sounds like as close to the fantasy kind of offering for a freelancer as possible. You just pay and get leads. That's like the most straightforward possible thing. I'm curious about the pricing change. Yeah.

Can I ask you what the pricing was and what it is now and why, like what the reasoning behind it was?

The the reasoning behind it was we were starting to send out more leads. The leads were were becoming a lot better and we started actually doing manual outreach for the freelancers. So so so freelancers don't even actually have to contact the leads anymore. We contact the leads for them and and kind of refer them to the specific freelancers and connect them. So we we just started doing more for the freelancers.

So we we raised the price. It's actually like

You're actually emailing the leads.

Yeah. That's kind of amazing. Mhmm.

Yeah. Like, we send the leads to the to the freelancer. So if you're a freelancer in the service, you can handle the outreach yourself. And we do encourage that, like, you know, go ahead and do that. But we also do that on the side too because because, yeah, we we then we kind of are able to refer those back to to the people in workshop and give them kind of a second chance at the leads if they if they didn't get it the first time.

Very cool.

And the pricing change kind of it made the, the service a little more exclusive also. Like we've been kind of aggressive. That was one thing me and Brian talked a lot about in in our mastermind was like, I've been kind of aggressive with the with the pricing on the service. So I think it's it's kind of like helped reward people who signed up early and who like because I grandfather everybody in. There's some people like when you sign up, know, you're going to have the best price for moving forward.

Man. I'm fascinated by pricing.

It's so hard. It's like an art and a science.

Feels very much like a guest, but there's like this crazy internal argument you have with yourself. Almost like depending on the day, depending on the feedback, depending on the comment that you just got like that like sets you off in one direction or another.

Yeah. Yeah. It's so tough. It's like, it's really hard like where I'm at with the new SaaS product that we're building. I'm just thinking through a couple of pricing options and I've been getting feedback from people on that.

So it's really hard before your product has launched, but it's like, it doesn't get any easier two, three years after your product has launched either.

I like counterbalancing my internal logic that's based on emotion, not logic. I like using other examples as like a marker. So I'm like, I know that SamCart has like 2,000 customers and they have this weird pricing. So whatever argument I can make, that's actually something that's more real. Like I use that as like my, as like the argument against what I'm feeling.

Like, oh, and you know, Grobots does this other thing and they charge minimum $500 a month with an annual plan. Whereas their competitor charges like $29 a month. So like there is like, you can't argue with with with reality as much as possible.

Right. There there are examples that you can point to that like, look, people build, they, you know, they must have some sort of viable business there. There is a market at that price point and, you know, both ends of this.

Yeah. And I also find that if you listen to people who are easily accessible online, they drive the thinking and the price down. But if you get on the phone with someone who does real business and is making millions of dollars a year, that, that drives the price up. Is that that person will

be You mean if they don't show their pricing?

Yeah. Like if you listen to someone on a Facebook comment, they're like too expensive. Everyone's is too expensive in that context. You get someone on the phone and they talk to you and they realize, Hey, this is a quality business person I'm talking to. They're like, I'll pay whatever you want.

Cause I know this is going make me money. It's going to save me $150,000 this year. It's worth it. And then that, that like brings your mentality like upward, Yeah. Like choosing who, who to listen to.

It's almost like pricing at a certain point is positioning for you for the business because it attracts a different type of person. If you're a little higher tier versus a lower tier,

One of the toughest things I think is is being able to test it. So in the startup phase when you're just starting up, it's just like, alright, just kinda go with your gut and maybe do some, you know, analysis on your competition and that sort of thing. But down the road, you know, if you wanna change prices, increase prices, decrease prices, you're not gonna get results from that within a week or even within a month. Like, you you can really only gauge the long term impact of that after several months of testing.

And and the fear is if you get it wrong, you're gonna, like, derail yourself for for months.

Right. Speaking of Basecamp and Jason Fried, I think he I think he had a his most recent inc column was about his thinking behind like they're they're planning some big price increase on Basecamp. Oh. And I I think he was just saying like, I mean, they're so big that they can weather a six month test like that. If it's a drastic price increase and it doesn't pan out for them, you know, tens of millions in in profit a month, they can they can handle that sort of thing.

But Yeah. I'm looking at Basecamp right now. It's it's hard to tell from their insanely unique pricing page. Of course, it's insanely unique. It feels right if you upgrade and pay a flat $99 per month, which sounds to me more expensive than Basecamp used to be.

It's chosenly one tier. It just says, try Basecamp with your team for thirty days. If you feel it's right for you, upgrade and pay a flat $99 a month with no per user fees. Interesting.

Yeah. I think that I think that is like going after like a different little bit higher tier. Like I've with project management software, even with Basecamp, it's always been what? 39, $29 a month.

Around there. I think at some point 49. But but it's it's 99 with without the per user fee. So is is that really a higher end? Because if it if they're going higher end, especially for a project management tool, which by its nature is user based Right.

Mhmm. You would think that they would do something like 49 per user and have lots of accounts.

But if you think about the modern version of businesses and agencies these days, the user thing changes depending on the project. That's like people must be actively like gaming their pricing system to like add people on and then take them off. That must encourage some strange behavior as opposed to just saying, anyone who thinks $99 a month is too expensive, don't use it. Anyone who thinks it's cheap is gonna get a good deal and everything's straightforward.

Yeah. That's the thing about about pricing too is like a lot of SaaS companies, they tie it to to these weird things that end up actually hurting the people using the product or like, you know, it doesn't have like the best interests of them in mind. So like, if you're able to tie the pricing down to something that's actually going to get them to use the product and be more successful with it, I think is always like a win win situation. But it's it's hard to find that. Like like, you know, like with me, like, I have I send them leads.

Like, what am I gonna charge them for? How many leads to email? Like, that would be a a sort of successful thing for me to do because that would mean they email more of the leads and they win more of the work, but how am I going to, know, it's very tough to find the thing you can actually kind of measure there, I feel like.

I agree. I think the metric to base it on is just as hard as the level of pricing. Yeah. We've struggled with that so much and we keep, maybe this is like founder driven because this is the way I think, but we base all of our pricing on revenue. Just really straightforward.

You make

I think anytime you can simplify it.

Yeah, but I keep looking around for other examples of people doing it based on revenue. I just don't see it out there, which I don't know if you want to tie pricing to value isn't that like the ultimate value, no one does it.

So e commerce shop shopping carts based on value or based on revenue?

No, everything's based on features and number of products and just weird shit that doesn't e commerce just did a pricing change that is partly based on how much money you make. What was that, Robert?

I was going to say I just did this, actually. I just remembered, like, I have a platform for freelancers separate from workshop called Folio. And so it's like, you know, a typical not totally typical. There are some differences, but there's it's kind of like a marketplace like Upwork or just a little bit more higher quality projects on there. We kind of guide the clients or whatever.

But that's good to know. What's what's the site?

It's folio, folyo.me. Alright. I choose the domain name, actually.

So what'd you do? Did you buy it or something?

The the original founder gave gave it to me, gave me the service.

Cool.

But anyways, I I had to kind of I redesigned the service and I had to tie pricing down to something. Right? It's technically free to use to to reply to these gigs on there and to use the platform. But I actually ended up adding a new feature that you have to pay for monthly, which is, like, you can reply to the the projects for free. And then to attach a portfolio piece, that's where you have to have a pro account like a and and and your and your reply gets sorted up to the top of of the of the heap.

So people who kind of value their time a little more and want a little bit better chance at winning the projects, they're able to kind of upload a specific portfolio piece that directly ties to the project at hand and stuff. That's actually been pretty successful so far. Like, I launched it last last month with kind

of a a

silent launch. I don't know what those are called, where you don't actually do anything. You just launch it. Yeah. And,

I mean, every every feature.

Yeah. And and it's been it's been awesome. Like, that that monthly recurring just slowly seeing it build up because of the that subtle kind of tweak to it. Mhmm. Because then it's not so much like I'm having to pitch people on it all the time.

It's when they when they go to reply to one of these projects, they have the option there to get upsold.

Oh, it's at the time when they go to reply,

they have the option

there. Yeah.

Very nice. I like that. I like those, when you're 90% in, you're already committed and then you get presented with it with it's kind

of like, all right, it's up to you.

You want to upgrade or not? You don't have to upgrade.

I feel like as a consumer, I've got to know what the pricing at least starts at before I spend any time evaluating tool or a solution.

Yeah. I don't know. I just this past

week I've been looking at marketing entryway. I've been looking at, you know, marketing funnel metrics tracking apps because I'm setting up a marketing plan right now. And I mean, I'm probably just gonna fall back on using Mixpanel for this, but there's a lot of these that are clearly marketed at like higher end, larger teams enterprise and it's call for a consultation or get a free demo. And I mean, it's kind of hard to tell though, like they're they're showing features that, you know, kind of compete directly with other tools that are like a $100 a month. So I'm trying to figure out like, is this in that same ballpark or are we talking like 500, 1,000 a month?

Like, and if it, at least just tell me what ballpark it is. Even if I can, even if the only way to sign up is to talk to somebody. Like, I don't want to waste any time if it's completely out of my budget.

I know, but they know if they tell you the price up upfront, you'll compare it on price instead of comparing it on what they want you to compare it to, which they'd like to convey to you over the phone. Yeah. But you know what? Think while you're looking at their screen of a of a of a fancy looking case study.

I think it depends on on the market and the product because there there are some markets like that, like like an analytics tool. If you're in the market for for an analytics tool, you're you're you're familiar with the you're you're tech savvy, you're web savvy enough to know that there are a thousand of these tools out there and you you are comparing tools. Like there are probably very few customers who are just discovering analytics for the first time and the first one that comes up on Google, they're just gonna talk to somebody and buy. I mean,

yeah, I agree. Like

that's the sort of thing that is very feature based and you do want to compare the tech specs on those.

I feel like even going down to like the service level where it's project based and custom, like, that's one of the, things I think freelancers kind of shoot themselves in the foot with the same the same way is, like, if if you went to Amazon and you were going to buy something, you wouldn't want to buy something that didn't have a price on it, like you or like a timeline on it, kind of defining that stuff is in itself just like risk aversion for the client.

Yeah, it's in a lot of ways it's a hurdle, you know, it's hurdle to like, it makes it more difficult for the customer to buy. And I'm not saying that there are some consulting services that should be like, it definitely helps to do like live demos, like we've talked about in the past and live you know, one on one sales. If you're doing like high touch sales with a higher price point, I'm usually on the side of show some sort of indication of price, whether it's like starting at 5,000 a month or

I'm with you as a consumer, as the business, I disagree completely. How am I

gonna I I think as I'm saying as a business, like it

Why? Because it qualifies

the leads before they talk to you. I guess, I mean, you can send out signals without an exact price range. You know, where you can say like projects, I think Shopify does this with their, they have like an experts page and they have a, you can filter. Okay. And we look at a Shopify design agency and they just say project starting at ten thousand.

That's all it's

Yeah, that's what I mean. That's good enough.

That's gonna give you another.

So what I

was going to say was how can you, how am I going to close you on a $25,000 project? If I say that number upfront, have no interest. But if I convince you that it's worth

a lot

more, then you're much more willing to pay for it. But you're saying, give me an indicator.

Yeah, but I mean, by the time you get into the conversation of this project is gonna cost $25,000 like the person is already qualified that they're in the market for that sort of level of service and price point. If there's no number, no mention of any dollar amounts anywhere on the site, then you're just gonna get plenty of calls and leads that are just like either kicking the tires or a lot of leads who just walk away because they assume it's way too much when maybe it's not as much as they think.

Yeah. I hear you on the qualification piece. It's a tricky thing.

Yeah. So what else?

Here's something that I've been thinking

about lately. I'm still kicking around ideas for pricing on this calendar tool that we're building audience apps. What about free trials? Like a length of a free trial. Does it depend on what the tool is?

Credit card required or not?

I tend to favor requiring the credit card one way or the other. But I guess I'm wondering about like how how long of a free trial to offer. Some apps don't offer a free trial. They just offer like a thirty day money back guarantee, something like that. Any thoughts on on these options?

This kind of goes back to to Basecamp's pricing that we talked about. But Jason, I heard him do an interview, I guess, where he was talking about that kind of topic of, like, free trials. And they had changed Basecamp to like the the you would sign up and you you would get one project and that was free free forever. They saw a bunch more sign ups happen as a result, but not as many like, once once you needed more than one project, that's when you would put in your credit card info and whatever. And they saw a lot more sign ups in general, but a lot less conversions to paid, I guess.

Mhmm. So the the thought process was like, yeah, the free trial is what was actually getting the conversions because there's like Forces

that to make a decision.

Yeah. There's a moment there where it's like, okay, here here's where you gotta make the decision. Yeah. I tend to think for a free trial, you shouldn't ask for a credit card because you don't need it. Like, it doesn't really make sense to me as a like, going back to as a as a consumer, like Yeah.

If you really want me to try this out, if you want me to be impressed by it, then why why do I have to get get the credit card if it is a free trial?

But I can kinda see the argument both ways on that. I I think, again, it depends on the user. But my

my hesitation to do that

is that it requires another action Yeah. Fourteen days or thirty days later. Whereas if you have

a credit

card, you can just you send them onboarding emails that kind of warn them, hey, your trial is ending, but

don't forget the amount of support and help that you'll be providing to people who you don't actually know if they're going to sign up. Depending on how complicated the product is, you might get a lot of free trials. We're in the middle, right? So the card abandonment product does not require a credit card, but in that we see it as like selling drugs. We just want them to try it because we know once they start getting recovered revenue, they'll be hooked, that type of analogy.

So we don't require it, but that has caused an enormous amount of pain. Forget the pain, It has caused us not to grow revenue as quickly because it requires that action at the end of the trial. And some people, even though they have a successful trial, they just don't take that action. And then we end up chasing them down. So what we're doing is a little mix of what Robert just mentioned with the upgrade.

We are now flipping over to, you can create a free trial. You can set up your campaign, but right at the time when you launch your campaign, right when you're about to get the value, we ask you to put a credit card on file.

Yeah. I like that.

You can do what you can connect. You can really get to experience it, but you want that value, put a credit card on file.

Yeah and it's also like they're in the mindset or in the mode of being engaged with the thing. Whereas thirty days later, they might be completely distracted with something else going on. Even if they've seen value in the free trial and they want to do it at some point, they might just be too busy. Whereas at the time that they initially sign up, they're totally engaged. And at the time when they're like activating and launching their campaign, they're also engaged.

So that's a good time to kind of, you know, make that decision.

So as far as like the calendar feature or whatever, like what what is the in order to kind of do like tie the trial period to something like what what does the tool actually do?

Well, it's basically it's called audience ops calendar. It's it's gonna be like an editorial calendar tool slash it's like a project management tool for managing content marketing, and it's all built around a calendar, with some automated checklists and delegating to your team and that sort of stuff. I'm I'm thinking just like a standard, like, don't don't reinvent the wheel. Let's just do a thirty day trial.

Right. The question is how long does it take for them to get value and what do they need to do? I fourteen days sounds a little short for that type of thing.

Right. I think thirty days because if you're developing say blog articles, takes a couple of weeks to fully develop that and

kind of get ingrained into their process in that thirty days and then they don't want to give it up.

Something that's funny because it is a calendar that they're going be looking at. Like, you'll be able to say exactly where the trial ends for them.

That's true. You can mark it on the calendar. That's a good point. I haven't even thought about that. So related to that, another question.

I know, Jordan, we've talked a lot about, webinar funnels in the past. Mhmm. We're selling a SaaS. And that's something that I'm kind of working on right now, planning out a webinar funnel to to sell this. And at the end of the webinar, wanna make an exclusive offer that's different from what you can just get from going straight to the website.

And we've talked about offering like an annual plan at a big discount and offering extras, you get like checklists and guides and all this stuff. I'm thinking about doing something along those lines. I don't know exactly what the deal will be that you can purchase off of the webinar. But then that's a question of it was like, I think that should be like buy now. You pay on day one out of the webinar.

Whereas if you come straight to the site, you can get a free trial, but it's a better deal to buy now.

That and scarcity and a deadline and true value, real incentives. You know, I mean, you're lucky you have assets, you have courses that you've done in the past that you can throw in to make it more valuable. That's how I see people doing it really well. Their value stack of what they're adding on makes a good argument to be worth the money, just that stuff. And then you, it starts to become kind of overwhelming value.

And you have that ability because you have all this stuff to stack on top of it from all the things you've created in the past.

One of the writers on my team for audience ops is we're working on like a big guide, like a big training guide that that'll actually be like a free resource, but you know, that'll be kind of given away and and and some extra training material, but then some sort of like package of like multiple months, you know, a discount would be the the offer off of off of a, like an educational training webinar, which I'm gonna be doing live for the next couple of months as as we get like from now to launch. And then probably next year work on doing some sort of like automated webinars, which I've which I haven't done before. So that'll be interesting.

Yeah. The the funnel thing I think is a it's like an interesting, really interesting topic. And and I've I've kind of gone from, like, I basically sell, my services and stuff like via like everybody does. Some people do drip campaigns, email drips, like there's the webinars, there's the all these all these different things. And I feel like in general, I have been paralyzed at times trying to set up like the perfect funnel at like for every different product I have when I feel like the reality is it's no matter how perfect I set it up, it's going to be like a messy process for any customer that's coming in.

It's they're going to go to one website, they're going to see this tweet, they're going to go, you know, see an article somewhere, then they'll come back and no matter what, like, they've test they've they've the data shows that as well. Like, the average customer goes to your website, like, 30 times or something before they purchase. So That's the hardest thing attribution.

Who knows? So

it's like, I like the idea of the webinars and I like the idea of having the drip campaigns and maybe giving each one of the of these different access points, like something unique about it. Like in the drip, you can get this one thing or like whatever. But just having that stuff, I think, is is the the key really, like doing it consistently and and keep it keeping it going because because, yeah, you you don't know how they're gonna come in and trying to be, like, like, too perfect about it. All it does is kind of paralyze you in some ways.

Yeah. Yeah. Hey, Alan.

I feel that pain.

Hello.

Are you there?

Yo. Yes, Brian. Can you hear me?

Yeah.

Started to call you when I was out there and sailing, and I was like, no. I don't wanna die. A and sail by myself.

So you're back on land?

I'm well, I'm still on the boat. No. No. I'm at anchor now. I'm in a little bayou called Smack Bayou, and, so I'm at anchor now.

So I'm good now. I'm safe. Well, relatively safe, but I'm okay.

Alright. Alright.

Cool. How's it going, man?

What are what are up to right Well,

this weekend we are some buddies of mine, we all have sailboats and we're gonna take them all and then we're camping out on them and then, still having a dude's weekend.

Awesome. Very nice.

So you know we've been talking about like pricing and different things but, we got a quick update from from Rob Williams who's also here on the line, know from from workshop and and Jordan, of course. But so we know that that you guys exited less. I mean, what's what's happening now? I know you've been doing some consulting. You're working on, like, less films.

What what are you kind of focused on right now?

Yeah. So it was crazy. Like, literally the day we signed our contracts, I had an old client come well, he's not actually old, but a former client come to us and say, like, hey. You guys available for contract work? And we're like, yeah.

And so we're actually building right now. We're building a sort of a video community for a guy named Sam Merrill, and the project's called Weltfit. And it's Sam Merrill, if you're familiar with putting this house on TLC. Mhmm. He's been doing real estate courses and stuff for about ten years and has an email list of about 3,000,000 people.

And so we're creating all the, you know, download this course and follow-up with this course and drip emails and all the stuff we use, all this accounting we're now doing on his product. And so we should be launching that product for him, first of the year, January, something like that. Very cool. So it's basically like it's like code school or you know, team treehouse or lynda.com for people who want to invest in real estate.

Nice. Is that like happening under the banner of less everything and and is that like a like a startup software development agency at this point? You guys have a team and everything?

Yeah. We have a team of four developers. We hired a full time designer. I'm helping out a little bit doing some front end stuff with some new line stuff. And so yeah, have a full team again, well a bigger team we had previously, we hired a few people.

It's strictly a contract project so we're billing hourly again and applying the things that we learned in the past eight years onto this product and so we were able to get a consulting project and have more people on it because we have the story of bootstrapping less accounting and selling it and all that sort of knowledge of life cycle emails and onboarding and all that kind of stuff.

Very interesting. You know, we've been talking the past two episodes really talking the difference between software and services and can a software company holistically add a service into the offering? Robert has like a mix of a product and service. Brian is running a service, but actively building a product and now listening, hearing from you, you just went from a product and now immediately dove right back into services. I'm curious about the prospect of having a consulting client.

How do you feel about it? Just the differences between what you just dealt with and trying to grow less accounting where you need a lot of numbers in terms of the number of customers versus the service, which need fewer people, but you know, you gotta deal with a different a different animal.

We had this shift in this industry, and Brian and has been a big part of it with prioritizing services. Right? And so, like, services was, like, such a dirty word, like, five years ago. It was like, oh, you have a service you sell? Oh, you know, someone told me, like, well, I don't have that staff money.

I was like, what? It's it's staff money is hard. Yes. It is. It's not like it's free money that rained from the sky.

It's really hard to get people to buy something over and over and over and over again. So I don't really mind right now having clients. You know, you always have someone you're beholden to, whether it's a thousands of small customers or one or two large clients. Certainly, there's better cash flow and SaaS, and that's nicer. It's more predictable because all it takes is two or three people getting mad at you at a service business and your cash flow really changes.

I don't mind it. I I think there's there there's a lot of ego around that and pretending that we're free. And, oh, you know, I don't have a client. I have that reoccurring money. You know?

I, you know, I've had both money, and, I don't I think both can be stressful both and both can be equally often equally stressful depending on what you're selling and who you're selling it to and how you set them up to respect you and appreciate you.

Mhmm. Where do you see this going for for less everything? Is it is this kind of like a like a stage where you're kinda doing doing a bunch of contract projects and obviously you guys have built some recognition for for what you do and like, you see yourself doing this continually for a while or building into some other product or other evolution or

where do you see it?

Well, you know, I don't know what I wanna be when I grow up. I don't really know. So I know right now we're enjoying not running a product and not having the stress of all the marketing stuff and customer support and onboarding. It's nice kind of being just and the client you know, our client has their their experience with landing pages, and he has this he's not saying anything. He has a whole team around him.

The guy's named Andy. And Andy is super smart. And so it's nice working with clients who are smart and and have equal knowledge that you have. But what we'll do long term, I have no idea. I know for the next few years, we're gonna keep doing contract work and making money being profitable that way, but we may build another product for ourselves one day.

I don't I don't we there's lots there's always lots of ideas. Right? There's 9,000 ideas. It's what do you wanna work on the next five years? And that we have, you know, I don't wanna go spend three years building a product that I'm not super stoked about.

And so we're just kinda taking our taking our time and and we're lucky to have this nice story of selling less accounting that clients tend to tend to think is pretty awesome and and they come to us wanting wanting some help.

Yeah. I've definitely noticed noticed that for sure. I mean, it's when you've when you've built some sort of audience and then some focus around around something, like you guys are kind of focused on building software startups, you know, you do attract better clients, better people to work with, people who who know you, who know what you're all about. So you're not gonna have the classic stresses of of dealing with personalities and and people that you just won't get along with that most freelancers and consultants face. You know?

Yeah. You know, it's it's never good to be the vendor that gets picked because you're the cheapest. Right. And that sets you up for all sorts of disrespect and and iterations that shouldn't be and they don't trust you. And so they're looking at you as a cheap cheap person, and and we're lucky to have a few clients right now that really respect us and value our opinions and letting us run with a lot of and we'll bring them decisions.

What do you think about this? And they're just like, I don't care. Run with it. I'm like, alright. Cool.

And so that's that's nice. And it's nice too. You know, I've always said with SaaS, there's never any highs and lows, like, to celebrate, you know, which is nice and bad. It's nice because it's, like, even cash flow and it's predictable most of the time. But it's fun getting big checks again.

Right? Like, oh, yeah. We got big checks coming in. Who wants a bonus? You know, that kind of thing.

That's fun. Right? And so that that sort of, and we're still in honeymoon phase of the whole contracting thing. I'm not I'm not pretending that it's gonna be, you know, buckets of money and and unicorns for the next ten years.

Yeah. I think that's a, that's a fascinating point in terms of the celebration involved. We have one product that sometimes we get big customers paying us $500 and more a month and that feels so good. That's like, today's a good day. I closed that business.

Today's a good day. Then the new product, we only have one pricing tier because we want it to start off really simple and it doesn't feel the same way. I'm like, oh, it's all just the same. Like, so what if

they're a

really big successful company? Cool. Can use their logo, but they should be paying us more money. We're opening up a second tier, you know, partly to kind of get after that same type of a feeling where not only does it feel good, it feels right for the business. Yes.

We're working with bigger companies. Things are more successful. We're making them more money. We're moving upward.

Yeah. I mean, with audience ops, I track it like MRR, like a typical SaaS, you know, because it's basically retainer based everything we do, but, you know, it's like one of those things that there pros and cons to both the service and the software side of things. With what we're seeing is, know, we can hit MRR milestones really quickly and you know, go up by 10 k, you know, over over a matter of thirty, sixty days. And then just a couple of clients cancel and you take a pretty big MRR dip when it's it's much different than like a 49 a month app, where it stays probably a little bit more stable. But, yeah, it can be a lot of ups and downs there.

I'm curious why Alan did, sell less less accounting. I know I know Why we did sell it?

Yeah.

Yeah. So, you know, we did it for eight years, and so we probably actually sold it too late. We should have probably sold it a few years ago. We just didn't know that there was a market that existed. We just got tired of working on it.

You know? After a while, you look at all these when I literally got a call this morning before I left, we got Corey. And Corey was like, you know, what made you guys grow? And I was like, I don't even I don't even know. I don't know.

Mhmm. It was such a trudge. I was like, here's what I can tell you. It's a dogfight the whole time. You never you always feel like you're getting your ass kicked.

And at some point after eight years, it just felt like, I don't know what to do next. What do we do next with this thing? Because there's always a feature ideas, but no feature ever is the thing that catapults you to a this hockey stick growth. And so you just start going like, yeah. All these ideas sound great, but we don't even know what to do next, which led us to just not being super excited to work on it.

And, you know, it it just wasn't fair to the customers and fair to the product. And, you know, SEI took care of the the sale and were awesome, made it easy for us. That was the other thing too. Years past, it was like, we should sell it. We're like, how do we do that?

I don't I don't know. Yeah. You mentioned, you mentioned that you

felt you you should have sold it years earlier. I wonder if you had because it like, leading up to when I was selling Restaurant Engine, I I was hesitating a lot because I felt like maybe selling it is in a way, giving up or or kind of a failure on it. And and or, you know, if only I could I could really push on this thing for two or three more years, it could be much bigger.

And we literally had those same discussions, Steve and I, days before signing the contract. We're like, maybe we should keep it. You know, maybe we should have these features. Maybe we aren't giving up. I don't know.

You, like, I think that's what I've realized as becoming an adult. I I have this sort of, like, internal confidence of what I think is right, but then most of the time, I spend myself spending my time going, like, second guessing myself and thinking like, no. You're probably wrong, and you're probably screwing it all up. Yeah. But at the end of the day, we got we got a very good metric of our revenue, probably higher than what what we deserved, because the marketing was so good.

We had so much organic traffic. Mean, we were getting, like, a 100,000 unique visitors a month, not counting people that logged in strictly from articles and content marketing. And so we got a much higher metric, and we had a bidding war at the end. We had we had five letters of intent going at one time. It was who who would give us the most money, who would close the fastest.

And so it was a little bit of a bidding war and SEI was awesome. David Ishnel, Thomas are all awesome. And made the process easy for it. Of course. And then the and then the people that bought us are awesome too.

They said, we said, well, how long do we have to stick around for? And they said, we don't really need you guys, which was really awesome, but a real big blow to my ego. They're like they're like, no. We don't we don't really need you so much. We don't need your I'm like, you sure?

You sure? We don't, like, okay. Cool. See you later.

That's that's huge, man. I I had a six month earn out and and part of it was I I mean, I

didn't spend a ton of

time on it, but I was kinda required to to be there for, you know, training calls and just be there with when questions come up. And, you know, with it was only a small portion was was on the earn out, but still it's it's like, you know, I don't wanna Yeah. I mean, I'm well past that. It's like it was a huge weight off my shoulders. Once it Totally.

Past that.

Yeah. And, yes, it's nice just having new new problems to focus on. It's just refreshing. Mean, we eight years on a SaaS product. Eight years and Internet years is like five hundred years in normal years.

I mean, that is a long time to be working on what and you're trying to deal with the same customers and the same problems, you know, it needed an it needs new fresh eyes, and they're adding features. They're adding good features and enhancing things. They're getting better and stuff that we just didn't have the mental capacity, energy, enthusiasm to build.

Yeah. So it was time. So what we were just before we we, like, wrap up real quick.

Yeah.

What we were originally gonna talk about today was kind of like balancing, you know, family life and and work and and entrepreneurship. Know, Alan, you know, on Facebook, you're basically living on a boat. Looks like. Yeah. What what does that balance look like for you?

I I mean, I know, you know, going back years, you've always been, you know, all about keeping a a stress free balance there. Anything that you guys are doing differently now, you know, especially as you're getting back into contract work?

Nothing really differently. There's no real balance, and just realizing, like, there's seasons to, like like, right now, it's so beautiful outside. I would just sit in my office today looking outside going like, oh my god. Why can't I be outside right now doing this daily or something? And it's crazy that I wouldn't just go out and go sail.

I mean, I have to get work done. So actually, I spent a little time last night before I went to bed answering a few emails. But if we're if I am unable to take a Friday off when the weather's beautiful, then what's the point of owning my own business?

Yep.

Mean, so and if I can't adjust my schedule when, like, when, like, daylight savings comes around, I wake up earlier, you know? If I can't make those adjustments, then, what's the point of we all have been like, then if if we're not doing if we're not accommodating our lives for the or having a business for our lives, then we're really a slave to our business. And then like, if the business is really an ego thing for us, it's not really the business has always been here for Steve and I to maximize like the what we can return out of our lives for. Like, so when, like, when I travel now, I travel with my kids. I know Brian took a long trip with his kids.

Total business write off. If you can't do that, then, like, what's the point of having these businesses? It's easier just go get a job, right? Couldn't agree mean

I'm all about like pushing on it and building and keep on you know growing the business, the team, growing the assets, but everything that I work on I want to make sure that like I can work on this for for a week or so and put some systems in place and then give it to someone else. And then and then it's just it continues to run, like, every little bit. Right. Yeah.

And this and I had plenty of friends who are entrepreneurs who are great people, great family people, and they are complete slaves to their business. They can't take a day off and their business dictates their whole entire life. And that's I will get a job before I do that. In business and life and everything, it's it's not one or two big decisions that makes your business flexible enough for your life. It's hundreds of little things of, you know, hiring the right people and teaching them what to do and just being like, ask this, I'm taking Friday off to go sailing.

I don't care. You know? If my business if if my business falls apart today while I'm on my sailboat, something's wrong with my business. Something is wrong. Yep.

You know? It's not sailing's fault. So it's it's it's and we've both been doing this for almost ten years now. So we have a lot of great people around us. My business partner is amazing.

My wife is amazing. We have amazing employees who have been around. We have Eugene, one of our programmers has been around for eight years. So it's not like if I'm unreachable by phone, no one can get the servers back up or something right like it's not there's no there's no real mistake that's going you know kill the company on Friday because I don't want to sell them.

Speaking of it's, 01:00 on a Friday here I gotta head out and grab some lunch and enjoy some fall weather up here. So, tell us, good to good to catch up with you real quick.

We get to work over here on the West Coast. Alan, Robert, thank you. Thank you very much for joining us.

Yeah. Thanks guys.

Absolutely. Good job.

Episode in the can. See you, Brian.

Alright. Later, guys.